Owlbox

A minimal macOS application that hosts Gmail's web client in a native window, built with Tauri 2 and React. Similar in spirit to Boxy Suite 2 — Owlbox does not reimplement Gmail; it embeds the real Gmail UI inside a native WKWebView and adds the OS integrations a browser tab can't. Because Tauri uses the system WebView instead of bundling Chromium, the installed footprint is a few megabytes rather than the ~150 MB of an equivalent Electron build.

Features

• Dock icon badge with unread count
• mailto: handler registration (Owlbox can be set as the system default mail handler)
• Compose opens in its own native window (Cmd+Shift+N)
• External links open in the system default browser
• Native preferences pane (theme, Gmail dark theme, default zoom, dock badge, launch at login, crash reporting, check for updates)
• Native keyboard shortcuts (see Shortcuts)
• Window state persistence
• Launch at login
• Auto-updates — checks on startup and downloads in the background, or trigger manually from Settings
• Opt-in crash reporting via Sentry (off by default; no email content is ever sent)

Install

Download the .dmg from the latest release and drag Owlbox into /Applications.

On first launch macOS will block the app because it isn't signed with an Apple Developer account. Right-click Owlbox in /Applications, choose Open, then click Open in the dialog. (Alternative: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Owlbox.app.)

Subsequent updates install silently in the background.

Non-goals

Owlbox is intentionally narrow in scope. It does not introduce custom compose or reply surfaces, bridge additional mail or messaging services, manage contacts, or duplicate functionality already provided by Gmail's web client. All mail-related behavior — UI, search, keyboard shortcuts, account switching, and add-ons — is delegated to Google's official client. The only visual modification is the optional Gmail dark theme, which is applied via a bundled Dark Reader injection.

Requirements

• macOS 15 (Sequoia) or newer
• mise for toolchain management

Setup

brew install mise
echo 'eval "$(mise activate zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc && exec zsh

mise install
pnpm install

Develop

pnpm tauri dev

Verify

CI runs every check below on each PR. Run them locally first to catch issues before pushing.

Frontend (from repo root):

pnpm lint
pnpm format
pnpm format:check
pnpm exec tsc --noEmit
pnpm test
pnpm build

pnpm format auto-applies Prettier.

Rust (from src-tauri/):

cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features --locked -- -D warnings
cargo test --locked
cargo audit

cargo fmt --all auto-applies rustfmt.

Other:

bash .github/scripts/check-audit-expirations.sh

A full bundle build (pnpm tauri build) takes 5–15 minutes and isn't strictly required before pushing, but it's the fastest way to catch release-only issues like LTO link failures.

Release

Releases are produced by .github/workflows/release.yml when a v*.*.* tag is pushed. The workflow builds a universal macOS bundle, signs the updater artifacts with the Tauri signing keys (TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY and TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY_PASSWORD repo secrets), and creates a draft GitHub Release containing the .dmg, .app.tar.gz, .app.tar.gz.sig, and latest.json (the updater manifest).

To cut a release:

# Make sure version is in sync across package.json, src-tauri/Cargo.toml, and src-tauri/tauri.conf.json
git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

After the workflow finishes (~10–15 min), review the draft at https://github.com/mgxv/owlbox/releases and click Publish release. The auto-updater endpoint only resolves to published (non-draft) releases — leaving it as a draft means installed apps won't see the update.

For a local bundle build (unsigned, no upload):

pnpm tauri build

Outputs:

• src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/Owlbox.app
• src-tauri/target/release/bundle/dmg/Owlbox_<version>_<arch>.dmg

To wipe all build artifacts and caches, run ./clean.sh.

Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+,	Preferences
Cmd+Shift+N	Compose new message
Cmd+R	Reload
Cmd+F	Find / focus search
Cmd+Shift+V	Paste and match style
Cmd+=	Zoom in
Cmd+-	Zoom out
Cmd+0	Reset to default zoom

Standard macOS edit and window commands (Cmd+C/V/X/Z/A, Cmd+M, Cmd+W, Cmd+Q, etc.) are also wired up.

Preferences

Key	Type	Default
theme	"light" | "dark" | "system"	"system"
gmailTheme	"light" | "dark"	"light"
defaultZoom	70 | 80 | 90 | 100 | 110 | 120 | 130 (number)	100
showDockBadge	bool	true
launchAtStartup	bool	false
crashReporting	bool	false

Cmd+= / Cmd+- step zoom in 10% increments and clamp to 50–150%. Cmd+0 resets to defaultZoom.

gmailTheme themes the Gmail web client itself via a bundled Dark Reader build injected as a user script — theme only controls Owlbox's own window chrome.

Crash reporting requires a SENTRY_DSN baked in at build time; without it, the toggle is a no-op.